Statistical mechanics of protein folding by exhaustive enumeration

It is hard to construct theories for the folding of globular proteins because they are large and complicated molecules having enormous numbers of nonnative conformations and having native states that are complicated to describe. Statistical mechanical theories of protein folding are constructed around major simplifying assumptions about the energy as a function of conformation and/or simplifications of the representation of the polypeptide chain, such as one point per residue on a cubic lattice. It is not clear how the results of these theories are affected by their various simplifications. Here we take a very different simplification approach where the chain is accurately represented and the energy of each conformation is calculated by a not unreasonable empirical function. However, the set of amino acid sequences and allowed conformations is so restricted that it becomes computationally feasible to examine them all. Hence we are able to calculate melting curves for thermal denaturation as well as the detailed kinetic pathway of refolding. Such calculations are based on a novel representation of the conformations as points in an 12‐dimensional Euclidean conformation space. Fast folding sequences have relatively high melting temperatures, native structures with relatively low energies, small kinetic barriers between local minima, and relatively many conformations in the global energy minimum's watershed. In contrast to other folding theories, these models show no necessary relationship between fast folding and an overall funnel shape to the energy surface, or a large energy gap between the native and the lowest nonnative structure, or the depth of the native energy minimum compared to the roughness of the energy landscape. Proteins 32:425–437, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.